23 ms·

Stop working so hard

• TheSOB88 14y ago
  Conversely, start working( harder ).
  • benburleson 14y ago
    Do you mean smarter?
• webwright 14y ago
  Empirically, people who succeed on a grand scale work their asses off because they love (or are addicted) to their work. So no, you won't be as productive if you aren't addicted to your work, don't love it, and/or don't think about it all/most of the time. (aside: yes, you need to eat well and exercise and take a breather from time to time). That said, productivity/achievement might be a bit overrated. Will your life be better and will you be happier when you achieve your goal? Will you ever achieve it? Most of us disregard the fact that wealth is not remotely correlated with happiness and still hunt for the big payday. [edit: lots of folks are asking for data. FWIW, I founded and ran RescueTime, so I was hip dip in this world for a long time. The data actually shows that, for line workers, hours worked have diminishing returns. However, when you look at people at the top of their game (executives, etc), they work extreme hours. Correlation does not equal causation, of course. But when you look at the most successful/productive people in your circles, how many of them talk about work/life balance, have lots of hobbies, etc? Maybe they're successful DESPITE their crazy work hours, for all I know.]
  • kylebragger 14y ago
    Interesting point. I guess, as an extension of this, I have noticed I'm accomplishing the same amount of net work in fewer hours. I can safely say I love my work, and that's definitely a driver in -wanting- to work more, but because it's exciting and fulfilling. (Obviously still balancing my non-work/family life with this.) Personally, my only goal in doing all of this is to create great things which are fulfilling for me and others to use, and that hopefully have some lasting/tangible benefit in my/their life. In a sense, I've already achieved that. The idea of great wealth is not a driver (and I think would only distract me.)
    • webwright 14y ago
      I'm not sure I buy your ability to understand your own productivity (people are notoriously bad at that). It's hard to believe that more work doesn't strongly (but certainly imperfectly!) correlate with more output... Up until that work exhausts you to the point and you start doing BAD work. Maybe that # is 35h/week. I suspect it's widely varied based on type of work, type of person, depth of love for the work, diet, exercise, etc.
      • kylebragger 14y ago
        I look at it from a standpoint of what tangible things I need to accomplish, and what I estimate I'll need in terms of time to do them. In the last 3-6 months especially, I've been constantly -under- my estimates. This correlates with starting to work a shorter week, taking more frequent breaks, etc. Not scientific by any stretch, rather simply my own observations. And yes - I'm thinking more in terms of folks working insane amounts of hours, at levels that put them well into the "doing bad work & burnt out" realm.
  • dscrd 14y ago
    ...and a good way to start hating your work is by doing too much of it for the wrong reasons. Working very hard to make somebody else rich, what's the point in that?
    • webwright 14y ago
      If you love/are addicted to your work, you don't care if you're making some else (or yourself) rich. And because we KNOW that wealth doesn't correlate with happiness, why SHOULD you care if you make them rich?
      • droz 14y ago
        Because it makes you a stooge if you don't reap the financial rewards of your labour.
        • Evbn 14y ago
          I hope your pile of money is in bills, as those are softer than coins. Or maybe money isn't your happiness, but merely one means to an end.
        • webwright 14y ago
          What's a stooge? Someone who enjoys their life and the byproduct of that is that someone else gets rich? The point is-- that guy you made rich? You didn't make him happy. You didn't impact his happiness at all (long term). So someone who gets rich on the back of your (rewarding/enjoyable work) isn't getting ANYTHING but shiny objects your monkey brain tells you equal happiness. I pasted these into another comment, but here are some studies around wealth and happiness: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h... (tl;dw: After a brief burst of happiness, wealth has the approximately the same long-term impact on happiness as losing your legs in an accident (i.e. NONE)) http://www.cnbc.com/id/100431776 http://www.cnbc.com/id/100431776 tl;dr the wealthy don't believe that money buys you happiness. http://www.livescience.com/5462-happiness-wealth.html http://www.livescience.com/5462-happiness-wealth.html "Wealth, fame and good looks may be a formula for anxiety rather than happiness, a new study suggests." There's TONS of data on this.
  • adrianhoward 14y ago
    Empirically, people who succeed on a grand scale work their asses off because they love (or are addicted) to their work. So no, you won't be as productive if you aren't addicted to your work, don't love it, and/or don't think about it all/most of the time. (aside: yes, you need to eat well and exercise and take a breather from time to time). Could you point me to that research? Coz every time I've measured hours worked against productivity (with a few different dev teams now) insane hours do not correspond to more productive work. Just coz people do it doesn't mean that they're more productive doing it.
  • thenomad 14y ago
    I'm not necessarily unconvinced by this, but I too would like to see some research or stats proving that people who succeed mostly work more than 8 hours a day.
  • neilk 14y ago
    > Empirically Citation needed. There are studies out there showing that productivity is proportional to days spent on the problem, not hours. It's likely that for a knowledge worker, sustained schedules with long workdays actually reduce average productivity. http://www.jamesshore.com/Articles/Business/Software%20Profitability%20Newsletter/Crunch%20Mode.html http://www.jamesshore.com/Articles/Business/Software%20Profi... There may be some exceptional people who can defy this rule, and it's possible they are concentrated in startups, but I'm dubious.
    • shadowmatter 14y ago
      It's been awhile since I've read it, but I remember reading something along those lines in "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" (http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates/dp/1594484805 http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-Motivates...). The thesis is that our motivation to do things is along a spectrum of intrinsic (for the love of the work) vs extrinsic (e.g. money). Generally the former yields better results. Some studies even showed that paying people to do things they love can be detrimental, because you're now adding an extrinsic motivator to something that they are intrinsically motivated to do, thereby making what they love feel like "work."
    • webwright 14y ago
      "There may be some exceptional people who can defy this rule, and it's possible they are concentrated in startups, but I'm dubious." Right. They are concentrated at the top. Here's one study (doesn't include work time at home or weekends): http://www.people.hbs.edu/rsadun/CEOs/presentation.pdf http://www.people.hbs.edu/rsadun/CEOs/presentation.pdf It makes logical sense-- combine the ability to work long hours (rare) with talent and you will blow the normal fatigue-able people out of the water in terms of output and (in a sorta-meritocracy) rise to the top.
      • zeidrich 14y ago
        It looks like that study shows that the median CEO works 50 hours per week, with 10 of that spent in travel or eating. To me that sounds like a very typical work week without spectacular overtime, crunch, hustle, whatever. It says that some CEOs work more hours, but doesn't correlate that with higher productivity. It says that few work less than 40 hours per week discounting meals and travel. 50 hours per week is 10 hours per day. Maybe like 8 to 6. Anyone complaining about expectations for crunch time would relish hours like that.
  • bjhoops1 14y ago
    Actually, knowledge workers are even more affected by >40 hr workweeks. Read this fascinating history of the 40-hour workweek and its demise: http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/ http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_... One of the author's (more interesting) premises is that individuals with mild forms of autism like Aspberger's, who came to typify the sorts of personalities drawn to tech in the early years, may be able to effectively work excessive hours, but ordinary individuals will experience diminished quality of work, just like everyone else.
    • Evbn 14y ago
      CEOs and directors aren't primarily "knowledge workers", they are networkers/connectors/presenters. It isn't the same sort of concentration as programming or accounts payable.
      • rhizome 14y ago
        Funny how a definition of work that applies to CEOs in comparable terms lets them "work" by playing golf and going to parties.
        • 31reasons 14y ago
          Signing checks for themselves is also lot of work.
          • notsosmart 14y ago
            How condescending... even by hacker news standards.
            • bjhoops1 14y ago
              You're allowed to mock a class of people who earn 380 times more than the average American workers. :) For $12.9 million a year, I'll let people be as condescending towards me as they want! http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/04/19/news/economy/ceo-pay/index.h...
  • junkilo 14y ago
    Agree with webwright. Found the article to be sorta silly. When you really love something nothing will stop you from doing/achieving. This seems self evident to me at least. This isn't to be confused with the world full of different peoples, worldviews and personalities. Only some of us find satisfaction in a productive 14 hour day.
  • shin_lao 14y ago
    Another way to put it, is that if you can work 60 "productive" hours a week you will most likely be more successful than someone that can only work 40 "productive" hours. The trick is to know your limit.
  • wybo 14y ago
    Running RescueTime is still no data, it is a claim of authority... Have you analysed it properly, was it peer-reviewed, can we see it for ourselves? I don't believe that people who put in more than 35 to 40 hours of real work will be more productive. A lot of people pretend to work a lot, or are forced to be in the office 50 hours or more, but that does not make them more productive. It just makes them seem more productive, and have less of a life... When I worked in the US I considered the whole startup-hours-macho culture of the SF-area to be quite pernicious both to productivity and happiness. In private conversation most people I spoke to had the same view, but nobody dared speak about it with the boss within reach. I mean I loved coding, I was excited about the project, and was on a team I liked, but the forced nature of having to show this love by being there 10 hours a day just reminded me of the two hours a day Cubans had to volunteer (in addition to their day-jobs) to show love for their regime. No data here either, but at least I don't claim empirically, apart from my own experiences.
  • espinchi 14y ago
    Totally off-topic. Thanks, and congrats, for RescueTime. Just got the e-mail "RescueTime alert for All Distracting Time", so gotta get back to work!
• kirinan 14y ago
  I agree, which will be much to the chagrin of the community. I spend less time working, and more time thinking. I find that I am able to get more things done in a shorter amount of time if I have fully thought through exactly what I am doing before I do it. I don't just mean the normal thought process, I mean the meta thought process (is what I am thinking truly accurate). It makes my work a lot better, and I often have to work a lot less to make something that is higher quality. I often out work the people who work twice as much as me, and my work quality is higher. Getting things done is important, getting things done right is more important. If this takes me more time, then so be it. The market doesn't go who gets done first, it goes to the person who does it best.
  • Smudge 14y ago
    > The market doesn't go who gets done first, it goes to the person who dos it best. Except when it goes to the first movers. If your product's success depends on a virtual land grab, it might be better to work those 100's of less productive hours, to get something out the door first.
    • kirinan 14y ago
      Sure; I'd rather lose the landgrab, get 10% of the market so I can then steal it back with a more quality product in the end. It depends on your goals, if you goal is make a sustainable business that will be around for a long time, its best to think of the long term, which is almost never won by the landgrabber.
    • SatvikBeri 14y ago
      The first mover advantage is actually quite rare, though. For example, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook were not the first companies in their domain. First movers only have the advantage when you have strong network effects and strong lock-in.
    • rodgerd 14y ago
      Apple trailed laughably behind Creative in the MP3 player and WinMo, Palm, and Blackberry in the smartphone market. Who's winning?
• noelwelsh 14y ago
  On this theme, I've found having kids has actually helped me be more productive. I don't have the opportunity to work crazy hours. I know I can't catch up in the evening so I have to make every day count. Because my hours are limited to a standard working day I never burn-out, and I'm motivated and ready to go each and every day. When they were really young it was rough (no sleep, etc.) but now they're a bit older it generally works out well. (Modulo illness. They are both currently coming down with something and it's going to wipe out at least two working days.)
  • kylebragger 14y ago
    That's really interesting to hear. I would guess that it also potentially helps click the switch from "work, then life" to "life (e.g. kids), then work". I can't imagine any amount of work being as fulfilling as watching your family grow.
    • sageikosa 14y ago
      I have teenagers. More fulfilling than watching them grow, is watching them leave. :-)
  • kirinan 14y ago
    I find this too. Just recently had a kid, and when I get home I want to spend time with him/wife, so I know I wont get to work at home/won't want to. It allows me to go hard for 8-9 hours, get home and not spend a day. It also lets me rethink priorities and move my schedule. Its a great thing, really is. Makes you think of ways to be more productive too!
  • samt 14y ago
    I've found this to be like serious sports in high school or college. When there are no choices to be made in your life, you do not make bad choices.
    • awaxman11 14y ago
      As a college athlete turned i-banker right out of school, you are spot on. I never had so many productive days in college when I had little / no time to do work vs. never had so many unproductive days in finance working 100+ hour weeks. I love Jason Fried's quote on this topic: "Workaholics aren’t heroes. They don’t save the day, they just use it up. The real hero is already home because she figured out a faster way to get things done."
• latifnanji27 14y ago
  Elon Musk is a great example of this post.
  • latifnanji27 14y ago
    Its not about how you manage your week, its about how you manage your day. Instead of working 4 days hard, and then 3 days of workouts, paleo and meditation --- try blending. Meditate. Work 3hrs. Eat/Relax. Work 2.5hrs. Gym. Eat. Relax. Work 3hrs. Read.
  • gte910h 14y ago
    I think Elon Musk has said "screw being happy, I want to walk on Mars before I die". He's a bit of an outlier most people shouldn't go off of.
    • nhangen 14y ago
      Unless of course you want to be an outlier.
• sylvainww 14y ago
  It's not easy finding that right balance, if there is one. Some people (like me at times) also like to work by doing sprints (2/3 crazy weeks) then resting (3/4 days vacation).
  • kylebragger 14y ago
    Finding the right balance is the hardest part, IMO. There's certainly no "right" answer, so long as you're doing work for the right reasons and can keep sight of the things which truly matter.
• kris121 14y ago
  kyle if you read this then please answer me. I am going against your voice. It's not make me thing that you are right. For you You are "Former Founder". I am sure you have a lot of penny and future safe in your pocket. What about people who new newcomer and newbie. Is this applied to us. I am weak in English and programming both. Are this applicable to everyone who just got started. I means this strategy help them to do. You make me confused.I hope someone can tell me the difference & reason about mine and their thoughts.
  • kylebragger 14y ago
    I think that it applies to everyone. To me, it's about the quality of your work vs. how much you're working. I think that even as someone newer to programming (or English), building a routine of a few "smart" hours of work (that is, being productive and effective) will almost always have a better outcome than working many, many hours but not being effective in how you're working. Get into a routine. Develop a system for yourself. Set realistic goals. I think you'll be surprised at what you're capable of accomplishing.
    • kris121 14y ago
      Thanks
  • yoshyosh 14y ago
    If you are new to something you should work a lot and hard at it. The only way to get better at something is to do more of it, not read about it, not talk about, just do. Just make sure you like what you are doing and that it's worth it and satisfying for you to work at it. I think at the end of the day its a question of wanting to be good or great at something.
• andyl 14y ago
  I really hope my competitors adopt the "Stop working so hard" mentality.
  • crusso 14y ago
    That's what occurred to me as well. These articles periodically work their way up HN's pages. People argue. In this very thread as in most others, "You should work hard" posts are greeted with "show me the data", while the article and comments to the effect of "slow down" are greeted with feel-good affirmation. All I know is that in my 25 year career, the periods where I worked my ass off were the ones that I'm most proud of because of the contracts won, projects completed, and general sense of accomplishment. I am highly skeptical of this "work less to achieve more" meme working its way through the industry. It seems to be one of those things where developers are trying to convince each other of its validity for obviously selfish reasons. It reminds me of the religiously minded folks who latch onto any justification that will reinforce their notions of a glorious afterlife.
    • stray 14y ago
      In my 25+ year career, the periods where I accomplished the most and am most proud of my accomplishments are in fact those times I averaged somewhere between 25 and 30 hours per week. Those times when I've been part of a team that valued ass-in-seat-time(tm) have been the times when I'm most embarrassed of what we produced. Where I work now, there's a pair of workaholics who produce insane amounts of code. Management loves them. They are the only ones who can understand their code and of course management thinks that's because they're smarter than everyone else. I'll be nice and suggest that perhaps there is a different reason nobody else understands their code.
• orangethirty 14y ago
  No, no, no. What you should do is work smarter. Instead of blindingly working hard, just work hard on the things that provide results. I work 12 hours a day (at the least), but only on the things that get results. I learned to just let go and re-focus quickly.
• noahrsg 14y ago
  I think in the future companies will realize they can retain exceptional talent by implementing a four day work week. As more and more hackers get older and have kids they will be drawn to companies that support an actual work/life balance, as opposed to the status quo of "its startup life of course you work 60 hour weeks."
  • RougeFemme 14y ago
    That's assuming that you are not expected to simply extend the hours in those 4 days so that your hours per week remain the same or decrease only slightly. . .as some companies currently do.
• dgbsco 14y ago
  The "40 Hour Work Week" is, and always has been, a total sham. It's a "factory production" mentality transplanted into the modern workplace - where our fruit is our creativity, not a number of units produced.
  • sageikosa 14y ago
    Amen. And jamming people into little veal fattening pens...I mean, cubicles...doesn't exactly make the use of space more effective either.
• jgreen10 14y ago
  There are such things as "big days". If you have a degree to finish, a conference paper, a demo, a seasonal feature, a lucrative work project, etc. Those are the times when I might neglect my body for 1-2 weeks, sometimes up to 4. Sure, you do have to return back to a normal, stable life after that and maybe have a little break. In all aspects of life, success is about performing at your peak at just the right time.
• bjhoops1 14y ago
  My last semester of college, our capstone course saw me at the head of a team of 5 CS students building a video game. Some of the other teams frequently pulled all-nighters trying to meet the course's ambitious deadline, but the whole semester my team and I never did need to work through the night. We ended up doing better than most teams, too. In fact, the team that "won" spent even fewer hours working than we did. Anecdotal, to be sure, but I found the inverse relationship between hours worked and quality of product quite interesting.
  • tomsthumb 14y ago
    Intensity is certainly important and you can lose that if you push too much for too long. This entirely anecdotal, but I probably wouldn't have graduated with if it weren't for the solutions i 'worked out' during naps. Maybe there's also something to be said for working while not working, not to be too round about.
    • bjhoops1 14y ago
      And don't forget in the shower! If I hadn't taken a break during which it occurred to me that I was doing it all wrong, there are problems I'd still be working on!
  • robryan 14y ago
    It might also have been that some groups were coming from further behind. They might have to first learn how to do something in their game then hack up an average first go which works but will need to be refactored later. Another team with more experience might be able to do the same thing straight away and write it in an extensible way.
• kylestewart 14y ago
  This has been one of the hardest lessons I've had to learned. Really, I'm still trying to get it right.
• kbouw 14y ago
  At my current age (25), I don't necessarily agree with this. I do understand the philosophy behind "work smart, not hard", but when I come across these posts where someone is claiming "work less, do more", i question whether they're truly passionate about what they're doing. My personal opinion as a startup founder, is that there is no such thing as work/life balance. Your startup is your life and your work should contribute to it. That aside, the post is rather misleading. You're giving advice to others on working less hours and smarter but had you worked smarter previously, you may have a different opinion. I prioritize my health, take a 5 minute break every 25 minutes (pomodoro technique), and get at lest 7 hours of sleep each night, all things which you seemingly didn't do. For now, all I can say is that I hope my competitors are reading this and nodding their heads.
  • mmagin 14y ago
    Why should you care about whether they are "truly passionate"? It seems like in your working interactions with people, either they're delivering enough (and delivering what they promised) or not, and they can be judged on that, rather than on abstractions of feelings.
    • rdouble 14y ago
      I'm not sure if the guy is American or not, but Americans are more ideological than practical. Being "passionate" about something is more valued than being good. Contrast this to other countries like Germany and Switzerland where a cool headed and calculating competence is seen as more of an ideal attitude towards work.
      • kbouw 14y ago
        American, yes. Do I compromise quality at the cost of passion? Most certainty not. But there is something to be said for the value of hiring with a criteria of passion for the idea and space. I made no implication it was either or. You can certainly have a passionate, cool headed and calculated player on your team.
• alphakappa 14y ago
  This advice requires some serious caveats, so be very cautious about following this. I would go so far as to say that this some really bad advice. Here's why: Once you reach a certain station in life, it's possible to sit back and think about being more effective while not working long hours. In fact, it's probably a great idea since it's easy to get addicted to working 7 days a week with very little sleep and that can wreak havoc on your health, relationships and happiness. However, barring luck, people don't generally get to that station in life without working those long hours. If you want to be really good at something, it generally requires extreme dedication (yes, I know some people are just naturally talented, but I'm not talking about them). Unless you are one of those lucky ones, you _should_ be working really hard to master whatever it is that you need to master. Ignore people who are already successful trying to tell you to take it easy. Also, unlike what Kyle says, people are not always working those crazy schedules to out hustle their competition. Often it's just passion and addiction to their own work and the desire to create something good (competition be damned)
  • JonnieCache 14y ago
    Just because you really want to create a great product, why does it follow that you should work 7 days a week? What is this SV obsession with haste? If your business won't be as valuable if you bring it to market 28% slower than you were planning to, maybe it sucks. Or maybe there's some other aspect to this trend I'm not seeing.
    • nhangen 14y ago
      I don't know, maybe getting to the point where you generate enough revenue to pay the bills?
• omnisci 14y ago
  My boss (Academic scientist) told us that we had to work a 70-90 hour work week to be successful in this business. I found that funny as I don't count my productivity in hours work, but in the amount of "product" I produce. "Working hard" shouldn't be a function of time, and I think more people need to appreciate that. This tends to be a little more difficult for people to do however, as it typically requires a lot of hard work up front. For example, it took me a month to figure out how I could make a 45 minute procedure turn into a 7 minute procedure while still maintaining the same quality. But I got it working and I can do 6 times the amount of work in the same amount of time.My free time can now be spent doing other things, such as working on a startup:) People just don’t do this for some reason. Put the initial investment into what your working on, make it as efficient as possible, and then reap the benefits while being productive AND having enough time to post cat videos on facebook:)
• wellboy 14y ago
  If you know exactly what do to, be it writing a pitch the whole day or writing a new feature for a week, you can not shower for the whole week and only eat junk food. The essence of the post for me however, is that you shouldn't just sit in front of the screen figuring out what to do next. If you arrive at that point, take a brake, hit the gym, reorder your brain. The best ideas come when you do something completely unrelated to your startup and you should do something like this at least 1-2/week. There's no use in accelerating when you're going in the wrong direction and 5h spent on a great new idea that you just had, is much better than 100h that still won't work. :)
• miles_matthias 14y ago
  So how do you do this if you get paid by the hour? Obviously you can raise your rate and decide how much you need to work for your sanity and for how much you want to earn, but is there anything else?
  • skeletonjelly 14y ago
    Try charging by value?
  • samedwards 14y ago
    Once your skillset is good enough, you can charge enough so that those hours you do work are enough to get you by. Sanity and health are huge. I've also had health problems by working too many hours nonstop in the past. Not worth it in the long run.
• crazygringo 14y ago
  Here's one way to think of it. Suppose you're working on a new product, and you have to decide whether to spend 30 hrs or 60 hrs / week on it, over the next two years. If the difference is between failure in the first case, and success in the second case, then it's either a bad product, or you're bad at planning. If you work half as much, then maybe it will have less features, but a good product should still be viable. And everyone knows predicting how your software will adhere to a schedule is impossible, so the chances are good you wouldn't even get it to work at 60 hrs/wk. Obviously, an order of magnitude difference in effort should produce a qualitative difference in your product. You can't replace ten good programmers' time with just one. But picking startup ideas that require you to be working 80 hours a week, is just bad planning -- it's waaaay too risky. When you live in a first world country, and are doing this out of choice (not survival), it's insane to sacrifice your health like that. If an idea is really good and really sustainable, truly a good business idea, then there are much healthier ways of finding success than working 80 hours weeks -- finding partners, networking better to get investment, etc. I'm not advocating anything silly like a 4-hour workweek. I'm just advocating realistic expectations, realistic risk management, and realistic work-life balance. You might get hit by a car two years from now. You don't want to have neglected all the wonderful things in life, like relationships and experiences with people, in exclusive pursuit of a startup over those two years. Even not getting hit by a car, there's a large chance your startup will fail. Don't throw away your life in complete pursuit of a single thing -- healthy balance is key.
  • 13b9f227ecf0 14y ago
    In a legitimate land grab style business model you could be working lots of hours for a rather good shot at very large amounts of money. I don't see anything wrong with burning the candle hard for a few years on a well calculated risk for high payoff. However, those situations are quite rare and for the most part people are working themselves to the bone for an expected value payout of peanuts, IMHO. In the 90s software and internet booms there were lots of clear land-grab plays going on where among a handful of entrants first to market with a strong product was going to finish rich, and that was indeed ultimately the case.
  • robryan 14y ago
• cheald 14y ago
  Work smarter, not harder. One of the things I quickly learned when I started working from home was that if I listened to my body, I was massively more productive when I was at my desk. Tired? Go nap. Restless? Go run. Stuck in a rut? Go hang out with a friend or play a video game or watch a movie or find something to get your focus off your work. I found that I could work more and be more productive simply by stopping working when my body(/brain) said "hey, quit". We're not built for 8-5 shifts.
• mrmiller 14y ago
  While I agree with the author's general sentiment here, he doesn't offer any evidence for his claim (besides anecdotal). Many successful people do put work first, plain and simple. I choose to spend time not working because I value things other than wealth/power/work (as most people do). But if you want to make a lot of money, working 100 hours a week is a pretty obvious way to do that, IMO.
• hello_newman 14y ago
  I think this is all true, but you could also make a viable argument for working more. I personally love the satisfaction you get after working those long days. It's like a high you get after an intense run. It helps that I personally love the work I am doing, so working 16 hour days feels like 5 hours. I am only 21, maybe it catches up with you the older you get, but for now 16 hour days are fine by me.
  • wildgift 14y ago
    Watch out. You might be at risk for workaholism.
    • Elizer0x0309 14y ago
      Or he has purpose to change the world. Workaholism is a new concept that would sound a joke to the greats as Einstein, Da Vinci and other outliers.
  • dualogy 14y ago
    I was like that at 21 (10 years ago) -- sad to report it won't last! My theory is, at the hormones of late teens to mid-twenties, anything is awesome. A stoner with a PlayStation and 3 boxes of donuts all day at that age has the time of his life! A DJ feeling out new tunes has. A coder doing 16-hour days has. An athlete does. A bro at a sports bar, too. Everything is just amazing at that age because pretty much nothing affects your well-being in any way, or rather, recuperation from any kind of abuse is at its all-time peak. Enjoy the ride! And yeah, take a day off every once in a while to ride bikes with friends and travel on the cheap. Better to burn out at 28 than at say 23 ;D
    • Elizer0x0309 14y ago
      You are a fool for capping his passion. Please don't normalize anomalies. If there is purpose then you can't set a time limit on that.
• Buzaga 14y ago
  Won't read because the arrows are mapped to changing articles.
• lubujackson 14y ago
  After working on a few startups, my experience is that when you operate in crunch mode for a long period of time the line between "crisis" and "normal" blurs and you simply can't distinguish or effectively scale your effort to the situation. This is especially harmful for entrepreneurs when they have to deeply consider their strategic options or programmers when they are trying to refactor code. I can't tell you how many hours of development I've wasted simply because I didn't want to spend an extra hour thinking through the implications and instead tried to "get 'er done." I DON'T agree that this means you have to work less than 35 hours a week and take long walks on the beach. I've had really productive times working 100 hours a week. But when you feel burned out or stressed, when you have trouble prioritizing your efforts, when everything feels like it's "way behind" you are going to make mistakes and put effort in the wrong place. It's important to stay balanced, but "balanced" means different things to different people at different points in their career.
• bugsbunny4341 14y ago
  Don't wear yourself out trying to get rich. Be wise enough to know when to quit. (Proverbs 23:4)
• stevebot 14y ago
  I wish I could do this, but it sounds to good to be true. I think I need to follow the postscript...
• trxblazr 14y ago
  ASKING FOR HELP: hi HN, I'll take the opportunity of this thread to ask for some advice. My current employer (a billion $ startup, ~200 employees) is asking all of us to work Saturdays (on top of the 12-13 hours I already work daily). I value my weekends, a lot. It's not that I don't want to work. I love work and on weekends, I still do. I have spurs of intense creativity and code productivity, but I want to keep those weekends for myself. How do I tell my employer that my weekends are not for sale? What should I expect from them if I say no more?
  • bstpierre 14y ago
    I'd expect them to show you the door. If you want to stand firm on this point, be ready to look for a new job. (I'd personally be looking for a new job anyway if I was asked to work weekends; there's more to life than work.)
  • mattdeboard 14y ago
    "I'm not interested in doing that."
  • wavesounds 14y ago
    I've been in the same position and it sucks a lot, especially when you aren't even being paid for the extra hours and you don't want to have to leave a company you feel invested in. Please you need to stand up for yourself and likewise all of us, employers need to know that if they want quality engineers they need to treat them like quality human beings. We cant let this become the new normal in our industry, the more of us that demand our right the less likely employers will be to try to take them in the future.
  • rhizome 14y ago
    "I'm sorry, that won't be possible." --Miss Manners Also, if you're in the US and a normal software developer, and depending on your salary, your existing 12-13hr/day schedule may make you eligible for overtime and back pay.
  • dyno12345 14y ago
    Tell them that in exchange for 20% more time you expect a 20% pay raise. Talk about all the things you're going to have to give up if you take that extra time, and how that makes you unhappy. Since they're asking for something from you, they can't get mad at you for negotiating something in return. No one can call that unfair with a straight face. Most likely if you do this they probably won't actually give you 20% but will may offer you something much smaller. You can decide to either accept this, or, you can say that their counteroffer is not good enough for you, so you can't take the extra time. That way your reason to refuse is completely impersonal, and not because you don't care. Regardless, start looking for another job in the meantime. The culture of where you work sounds completely inhumane.
• markdown 14y ago
  Says man who has essentially 'made it'.
• PAULHANNA84 14y ago
  Too much argument over this. Yes, for the majority of individuals over working is going to physically, mentally and emotionally drain them as they're generally trying to balance a separate life. The individual who wrote this article stated that he has a wife. Perhaps spending less time with his wife had some repercussions associated to it. Perhaps he likes his business but isn't completely in love with it. You can't really speak for everyone, that's for sure. It all depends on your purpose, your motive. What's your driving force? Why are you conducting business to begin with? I myself am a business owner and have been working non-stop for the last 10 years (from 18-28). When I'm not working, I'm still mentally engaged. I don't unplug or clock out. To me, it reminds me of when I was a child addicted to gaming. I would blissfully spend 12 hours playing my Sega or Super Nintendo in pursuit to beat whatever game was at hand. When I was at school I was thinking of ways to beat the level that I might have been stuck on for a few days. This is called passion, it's rare but it does exist so although I appreciate the article, I must ask to not advise everyone this same idea.
• Elizer0x0309 14y ago
  Wow! The audacity on two things: 1. Stop trying to cap my passion by throwing a number of hours I can spend doing it. 2. You built a "Task" app. I'll consider any opinion from you when you're actually contributing to the advancement of our species rather than tagging along old created technologies.
• kilroy123 14y ago
  Just started a new job where the work week is 34 hours. (1 hour on friday is for happy hour) So 9-5, with no overtime. I know this sounds crazy, but I feel like I have a lot more energy left after the day is over. I also notice no one really wasting anytime during the day, since there's one less hour to get work done. No hour of chatting, surfing HN, etc.
• thrush 14y ago
  Can someone please explain to me how this applies to students? I have read a lot of articles talking about enjoying life more and working more efficiently (the 4-Hour Work Week is perhaps the most convincing literature I've read on this topic), and although I actually wholeheartedly AGREE with this mindset, I can't see how I can start applying these ideas until I'm out of school. Are students forever bound to their over-demanding schedules? Or is there some way for us to embrace the philosophies of freedom and joy prior to joining the real world? -Senior Undergrad Studying CS
  • jes5199 14y ago
    consider graduating! It's a neat trick that helps reduce your workload.
• ruswick 14y ago
  He seems to present a polarized interpretation of work. Either one can race towards burnout by working 100 weeks or they can enjoy 6-hour days, frequent vacations, etc. Both of these are untenable for most people. The majority of people work fairly diligently and their jobs take up the preponderance of their time, but aren't necessarily working hours that are unhealthy. People who work 40-70 hours per week generally fall within this category. He also doesn't confront the fact that many if not most time commitments are immutable. Most people have certain tasks and obligations need to be done periodically and take a relatively static amount of time. This time expenditure is stable and unlikely to change or disappear anytime soon. For instance, I know that, between school, various scholastic obligations, and the occasional bit of freelance or personal work, I put in roughly 65-75 hours per week. Obviously, this takes up the majority of my time, but is not all consuming; and I don't believe that it is having any substancial adverse effects on my health. Moreover, these hours are unavoidable, and I couldn't circumvent them even if I wanted to. In its essence, this post is advocating for the right things insofar as it is encouraging work-life balance and discouraging subjecting oneself to dangerous working hours, but takes a fairly myopic view of work and makes suggestions that aren't really tenable in many situations.
  • jaytaylor 14y ago
    40-70 hours a week is healthy? This makes me laugh.. why not just select an even bigger range.. people who work 30-120 hours a week? Sounds great.
• pagejim 14y ago
  If you have time to write long blogs and exhaustive comments, then I am not sure you are really working hard enough on the thing you love the most. And that is why most people here on HN (me included) might not ever get know what it is like to be in the "zone". Hence this whole debate of working hard or not working hard or productivity is all really BS.
• scottbartell 14y ago
  This article is the perfect length.
• athiercelin 14y ago
  Just like this post tries to claim "The Hustle™ is bullshit" so is this post. It's not work hard vs work smart. It's both. For me, if I sleep less than 8 hours I'm brain dead => 0 productivity. I am more productive at night than during the day. I need to change regularly the project I work on, so I am always working on several things at once. For instance, I am less productive 50hrs a week on the same project than 100hrs a week on several one. And the list goes on and on.. It's up to each and everyone to see where you start loosing productivity and what makes you a better worker. As a CEO, this ability of self improvement is something I am always looking for in my employees. (but it's rare) The last thing I am looking forward to do, is checking the clock. When you pay someone the big bucks, it's not to be changing diapers. The only thing that is for sure is that in term of productivity, there is no black and white truth or rule.
• hallomac2013 14y ago
  And how exactly are you going to output more quality without more working? Can someone please explain this to me?
• phryk 14y ago
  I can second that. I've been working 30 hour weeks since last year and am more balanced and relaxed since then. Working less also helped me downsize my depression and (as of lately) procrastinatory tendencies. It also gives me more energy to work on my own projects and interests.
• kwikx 14y ago
  I tried shifting from measuring how long I work to measuring results. And it was more traumatic. I would be agonizing everyday that I was taking so long to come up with anything concrete. It was especially true for doing anything creative, where its not really correlated to time spent. What I would really like to know is how to shut off the entrepreneur guilt. There's always something to do at any time, and you're perennially guilty.
• goggles99 14y ago
  I think someone else tried this before. It is not working out very well though. Who was it.. Oh yeah - it was France...
  • epsylon 14y ago
    Yep, the fifth largest economy in the world and the second in Europe. Definitely not working... Oh wait
    • goggles99 14y ago
      Ohh please, it's a mess over there (I have family who has lived there for almost 20 years who I talk to regularly). France is on a steady decline. If this was so great - why are things getting worse over there rather than better?
• jfinnson 14y ago
  I think the issue of productivity extremely depends on the person. For me: I like to work 4 14hr days with a 2 hour gym break in the middle. Not 4 days in a row either. This works for me because the gym really breaks up my work day and I am most efficient when I get "in the zone". Also, when I am in the zone, I hate being interrupted or leaving work. It takes 2-3 hours for me to get into the zone some times though. I am 24 years old, the lead engineer at my company, amateur personal trainer, and power lifter.
• brandonhsiao 14y ago
  This article isn't very convincing. (I'm not saying he's wrong.) His point is that working less makes you happier and more productive, but he doesn't really talk about how or why or give any cases illustrating such. All he really ends up arguing is that overworking is bad, which is nothing new. For what it's worth, though, I agree with what he's trying to imply. If the amount of time you work is increasing by n and your work quality is decreasing by n^2, you're screwed.
• tyang 14y ago
  This makes sense for most of us. But if you want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Elon Musk, do you work smart but not that hard or do you work smart and work hard like they did?